PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE PEAT DEPOSITS OF FLORIDA.
ROLAND M. HARPER.
PREFACE.
In the preparation of this report the writer has spent only about twelve months in the employ of the Survey, and as a considerable part of that time was necessarily taken up with office work, it was not possible to devote more than a few days, on the average, to the exploration of each county. Under these circumstances it has obviously not been possible to discuss the peat resources of each county in detail, or to describe many individual deposits. Still less has it been feasible to make any quantitative estimates, or to study the structure and development of each type of peat deposit. Every county in the State has been visited, however, and samples of peat have been collected in sixteen.
At some future time, when the population of Florida is considerably denser than at present, it may be found expedient to have the peat bogs of the State, or of certain counties, sounded, measured, analyzed, counted and mapped by an engineer, for strictly commercial purposes, or studied in a thoroughly scientific manner, regardless of economic considerations, by an ecologist; or both. But now while so much of Florida is still comparatively unexplored, and the peat industry in America is still in its infancy, such detailed studies are hardly desirable. The present report is the work of one whose specialty is traveling rapidly and jotting down impressions, without stopping to -make measurements or delve into minute details.
Instead of discussing single counties, townships, or swamps, as several peat investigators in more thickly settled or geographically homogeneous states have done, I have attempted first to subdivide the State into natural divisions, each of which is essentially uniform in one or several respects, and to sketch briefly the peat situa'tion in each. I have then essayed a classification of the peat deposits of the State, based primarily on the color, depth, fluctuations, etc., of water, and secondarily on their vegetation. AS